FIFTY FIVE FICTION / WHY WRITE

Fiftyfive fiction

1. There they sat, as they always would, a rooftop apart, watching each other. He sighed, she watched as the smoke curled its way silently into the cold blue sky. Beneath them, the empty streets glowed in the lonely moonlight. Both chimneys regarded this, and each other, with melancholy longing. So close, yet so far away.

2. She sat quietyly on the porch, watching her daughter in the garden, admired the slender strong tilt of her head in the sunlight, the smile in her eyes as the wind tustled her honey-brown hair. My daughter, she thought to herself, my beautiful daughter. And she got up to take the wheelchair-bound girl back indoors.

3. Cleared her throat and she began, wisps of song escaping across the sleeping town, notes floating high into the night sky, the moon her spotlight. Momentary pause, then final note, lingering in the air as though caught in the December frost.

Evidently pleased with herself, the cat took a bow and leapt off the wall.

_________

Why write?

My daughter comes into the living room where I am writing on my laptop. Behind us, the sunlight is melting into the morning and the wind is making the verandah curtains billow. A good morning, I think to myself, for writing. My daughter throws down her writing pad emphatically, petulantly, as though that in itself were enough to convey her agenda in coming here to interrupt my work. And then she begins.

“Why,” she starts, “why write?” It is a demand more than a question, and it hangs bashfully in the space between us, uncertain of where to go. “What’s the point in any of this?” She gestures to her half-written essay, sprawling unceremoniously on the glass tabletop, a sad jumble of single-lined exercise paper. “None of this is going to make any difference, so I might as well give up.” I look at her face, a mess of defiant scowling features, and wonder what to say to her.

I want to tell her that she writes, we write, not because we want to but simply because we must. That writing is how we keep our thoughts seeping into the canvas of life, how we keep ourselves in orbit with the world around us.

I want to tell her that whether she likes it or not, her words are the looking glass through which people will view her. I want to tell her that every word she writes is a part of her that she shares with the world, and that her words have power. Not because of what they are in themselves, but because of the thoughts that propel them out of her mind and onto the pages in front of her.

I want to tell her that no one else can string the same words in the exact way that she can. That even if they do try to, the stories that the words tell will be completely and utterly different. And that is why she must write, because her stories are one-of-a-kind, the most valuable things she has to offer the waiting world.

Instead, I look her in the eyes and smile. “Keep on writing,” I say, “just keep on writing.”

Written by Shzehui from 314(: